World History

My dear friend Serge

I 'm writing you this letter with inly dismay and anxiety for our motherland , Russia . I want to relate you the story of the actual state of affairs in Russia in the current year of 1919 . I want you to know about everything from the first hand . The whole country is overset by chaos . The small group of fanatics managed to seize the power in the country . To say that Russia suffers from inflation , lack of food it would mean to say nothing about the real situation

Our

trainings have stopped . Moreover , the whole our cadet corps has been destroyed by Bolsheviks as the hangover from czarist regime . All educational institutions are closed down . And who can think about study when the world around goes all to pieces . I and many of our friends decided not to lie up the events in the state and stick to that side to which our heart tells us . Of course , we could have waited out while the situation had normalized and Bolsheviks got pulled down as some of our cadet mates did . However , I consider such actions to be an outrage against the motherland . I must inform you that the unity in views which used to be the distinguishing feature of the czarist cadet corps alumni vanished into the thin air . A lot of our mates captured by the idea of universal justice joined Bolshevik units , others went to socialist-revolutionaries (eser in Russian ) which is the most radical revolutionary party but the majority of them along with myself including made their choice in favor of the white ' movement . We joined General Denikin 's Army and want to pull Bolsheviks down even if it cost us our heads

My father was shot dead by Bolsheviks . He was an ordinary military officer and was not interested in politics . But the fact that he served as the officer in czarist army was enough for Bolshevik to kill him . So as you see I have some personal reasons to fight Bolsheviks

Now I want to tell you about the course of the events which happened after our disgraceful defeat in the war and how Bolsheviks managed to seize the power without both sufficient support from people and sufficient resources

As you know we entered a war with a number of unsolved social and economic problems . For you know that Russia is mainly an agrarian country and the opinion of peasantry reflects actually the opinion of the whole society . The conflict between the country authority and the peasantry has very deep roots and its beginning is traced back to the abolishment of serfdom in 1861 . With this act the government obliged the peasants to pay off the price for the lease of landowners ' land in the course of 9 years . However the low level of work productivity and too high payments hindered peasants from paying off their debt . Then the government paid that money instead of peasants but respectively obliged them to make annual...